Search This Blog

Cool Japan exhibit: otaku (part 4)

Besides the cool figurines, there are more things for the otaku to feel right at home at the Cool Japan exhibit in the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. First, there are these beautiful cosplay costumes. In the left, you can see the costume of Princess Dorothea
from the Avalon Code (a game on the Nintendo DS), made by the Danish
cosplayer, Sørine Karlsson. There is also a costume of a medieval knight and an elf.

I also saw this cute little girl statue (created by melting a lot of figurines together). It was made by three,
a collective of artists from Fukushima, Japan. It was especially made for this
exhibit and they added figurines of characters who are famous in
Europe, such as Smurfs, Tinker Bell, and Asterix and
Obelix.

Besides just passively looking at objects, you can also play on one of the three Japanese game arcade machines: a flip the table machine, a drum machine, and a Street Fighter machine. I played the drum game and it was a lot of fun, since it is the first time that I was able to play games for as long as I wanted and without needing to insert coins. This time, my mom also wasn't around telling me that I am wasting money and that we needed to hurry and get back home, because she needed to prepare for dinner. Isn't that the annoying thing that we all experienced as a kid?

A manga collector also bought thousands of manga books for the exhibit and this manga library was created in the middle of the museum. You can leisurely take your time and read them all if you want. I loved to go to the library when I was a kid and I wish this kind of manga library existed back then. All the manga are the translated versions in English, so you don't have to worry that you cannot read Japanese.

There are manga books from all kinds of categories, so I am sure you can find something that sparks your interests.

When you still have some time left, you can also play games on the Nintendo 3DS XL and meet the Robot Pepper, who can interact with you.